Saturday, March 29, 2008

Google Maps- Boise, Idaho Street View Embeddable panorama

The Google Lat long Blog posted a note on December 11, 2007 that any available Google Maps Street view panorama can be embedded on a web site or a blog. I decided to try this out and place a panorama of a street showing one of the downtown Boise buildings that provides a creative River artwork scene facing the street. You can move this panorama around in a 360 degree circle and you can also zoom up close to the artwork. If you click on the "View Larger Map" link on the bottom left of the panorama, Google Maps will open and you can navigate around the downtown area of Boise starting at this location. You can also choose to navigate to panorama views of most of the streets of Boise by selecting locations on the "Larger Map."


View Larger Map

Monday, March 24, 2008

Phase 3 - The Internet and World Wide Web

I believe Web site projects can now begin to create interactive social networking interfaces, semantic links, and cross referenced data aggregation opportunities to aid future environmental networking decision making processes at a local, regional, national, and global level. The brief outline below provides a general summary of the important components that are already providing impetus for this developing third new phase of the Internet. Our next web site projects with Mountain Visions will attempt to incorporate these features and I will attempt to explain this process on this blog as time allows.

Geospatial Web
Online maps loaded with Place &TIme Based data about the physical world.
Google Earth/maps, Virtual Earth, NASA World Wind, etc.
Virtual Communities

MobileWeb
The World Wide Web as accessed from mobile devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and other portable gadgets connected to a public network. Access does not require a desktop computer.

DataWeb (Semantic Web)
Expert and Knowledge based Content and Concepts,
Semantic Searching - Much more defined, reputable and reliable search results.
Related to Geospatial place and time all data sources noted below:
Scientific papers, reports, studies, etc.
Environmental Impact Statements, Planning documents, etc.
GIS Data bases from many sources - local regional, national and global.
Other Databases - Government, environmental, knowledge, economic, visual, etc.

OpenSourceWeb
Open Source software, public domain knowledge, etc.
Online web applications, public domain imagery etc.
Shared GIS data and GITechnology

ImageWeb (Images are unique forms of data. See DataWEb)
A proliferation of shared GIS maps, historical maps, paintings, graphics, photos,
video, audio, animation, etc. related to the Geospatial and Data Web.
3D Simulations, Virtualization, and future scenarios and models based on existing data.
Virtual Environmental game scenarios.

SocialWeb
Social Networking 2.0 and 3.0
Education - K-12, Community and College Networking.
Citizen participation, volunteers, public input.
Pubic tagging and rating tools for data, photos, knowledge, etc.
Posting photos, citizen monitoring data, blogs, wikis, and much more public involvement in planning decisions.